The prisoner sat in his cell, alone but for his
memories.
Still, even
in confinement, the eye of his mind was free to survey and summarize
the
sweep of a spectacular career. And when that inner vision had
crystallized
itself into words, he took up a pencil to preserve them:

They have called me the Prince of Liars,
but, in
truth, I am
King of the Luckless.

Life has taken me to the top of the world, and
down into the
abyss.

Kings and felons, savants and savages, have been
my
associates; I have
lived in the rarest luxury of civilization, and in aboriginal
simplicity.
Once the far horizon was my only confine, which now is a barred cell
and
the towering walls of the Federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Civilized humanity has hailed me as one of
history's
immortals, only
to snatch the laurels from my brow and place there instead the brand of
fraud and criminal.

Wealth has flowed to me in torrents, then
trickled away to
leave me
at last in utter poverty.

But though Fortune has cast me deep in the
shadows; though
the world's
plaudits have changed to condemning hisses; though I am penniless and
ageing,
there is no bitterness in me, for I have three things remaining that
are
above those which have been stripped from me--my friends, my hopes, and
my philosophy.

He had always been an introspective man. Now there
was
limitless opportunity
for introspection:

The purview of life is ever the outcome
of memories.
Foresight
can never be more than hindsight ... through which to envision the
future.
If we saw life in one whole sphere, ... how much more thorough our
culture
would become. But we see the unit of human endeavor only in
sections--mostly
in spectacular sections. History is seldom more than somebody's opinion
of the thrill source of life--the stagy artifice of an upstaged world.
This is to a large extent unavoidable for the mind does not retain the
commonplace in which union of purpose must ever be grounded.

As he paged backward through the mental record of his life to the very
limit of his earliest memories, Frederick Cook must have wondered at
the
chain of chance and circumstance, the opportunities presented or made,
then taken or turned aside, that had led him to this place and to this
hour.

But life's chances are not all our own. A life is
not a story
written
front to back from birth to death; it is rather a series of related
events;
a chapter in a continuing story passed one to the next as long as life
lasts.

And so, as for countless other Americans before
and since,
Frederick
Cook's chances were ultimately the result of his immigrant parents'
decision
to leave behind an Old World for the New, to abandon the known for the
unknown, and to strike out on a untried path toward a new destiny. It
was
a course he, too, would follow, but in a different way.

Looking from that barred window beyond the gray
walls to the
far horizon
now denied him, and farther still into the limitless expanse of the
starry
Kansas sky, he mused: "It is a long step from the doom of Leavenworth
to
the sunrise of ambition."

There was little to set Theodor Albrecht Koch
apart from his
neighbors.
A plain-looking man of average height and weight, with his high
forehead
and fringe of dark whiskers framing an otherwise cleanly shaven face,
he
had the look of an Amish farmer. Born on June 8, 1822, in the town of
Schneverdingen,
about 20 miles south of Hamburg, he was the first of his family to
leave
Germany. Why he left is less than clear.

For years he had assisted his father, who held the
medical
concession
in Schneverdingen. After Dr. Koch died, Theodor continued to minister
to
the sick, despite having no formal medical training. When a licensed
doctor
complained of this, the townspeople paid to send Theodor to Hamburg to
study. But they suffered by his absence and petitioned that he be given
his father's concession before he completed his course. Perhaps their
request
was refused, or perhaps he came to America, like so many other northern
Germans of the time, because he had no prospect of inheritance under
German
law, the estate falling to the eldest son.

Whatever his reasons, he did come, landing at New
York in
1855. In the
company of several other new arrivals from Germany, he traveled to
Newburgh,
then westward into Sullivan County. The concentration of Germans
already
in the area may have caused him to settle in Jeffersonville after a
brief
stay in Lake Huntington. He must have found the country agreeable,
since
eventually his three brothers followed, leaving only a sister in
Europe.

Among the immigrants already established in the
area was
Frederick Long,
formerly a successful manufacturer of cigars in New York. To escape an
epidemic of cholera that struck that city in 1850, he had taken his
family
west, up the Hudson to Newburgh by raft, then overland by covered
wagon.
He, his wife and eight-year-old daughter, Magdalena, had come to
America
from Frankfurt in 1844. Now they intended to go much farther west. But
passing through the rolling wooded country above the Delaware River,
they
paused at a place called Beechwoods, six miles west of Jeffersonville.
Here the Longs settled, cleared the top of a hillside and prospered,
the
family growing to six children.

In Jeffersonville at a community dance Dr. Koch
met the
fair-haired
Magdalena Long. It was an attraction of opposites: he a Lutheran, she a
Catholic; he known for having an excitable temperament, she from a
family
noted for its reserve; he in his thirties, she still in her teens. But
if there were objections or obstacles, all were overcome. After a
proper
period of courtship, they married on March 12, 1858.

For a year, the Kochs lived in Jeffersonville
before moving to
Beechwoods
and finally, in 1860, they settled with their son Theodore in the
hamlet
of Hortonville at the foot of the Catskills, two miles from Callicoon
Depot
on the Erie line.

No doubt they lived a hard yet respectable life.
Though Dr.
Koch enjoyed
an extensive practice, cash was scarce; his patients usually paid him
with
eggs, fruits and vegetables, or an occasional chicken. Of the Koch
farm's
15 rocky acres, only two were tillable. But the doctor, fond of horses
and hunting, supplemented the larder with game from the surrounding
hills.

There, between Callicoon Creek and Joe Brook, in a
slab house
with two
bedrooms and a third room that served as living room and kitchen, the
rest
of children came--first William, then an infant who lived but a few
days,
and then Lillian. The Kochs solved their religious differences through
choice or circumstance, attending the German Reformed church in
Hortonville,
where they enrolled their children in Sunday school.

During the Civil War, Dr. Koch found employment as
an
examining physician
for recruits entering the Union Army at Goshen. The payroll clerk
listed
him on the roster by the English equivalent of his name, Cook. Having
been
irritated since his arrival in America by the inability of most
non-Germans
to pronounce his name properly, most calling him "Cox" or "Kotch," Dr.
Koch capitulated long before Appomattox, and "Cook" it remained even
after
he left the Army's service.

The war was over hardly two months when a fourth
child arrived
on June
10, 1865. They named him Frederick Albert and called him,
affectionately,
Freddy.

The boy's earliest recollections were of traumatic
experiences. At two,
while playing with his dog, he had leapt upon the stove. One of its
covers
gave way and his foot went into the fire, setting his clothes alight.
The
feel of the fire licking at his leg was frightening enough, but the
unexpected
bucket of cold water his mother doused him with was even worse, leaving
him gasping for breath. He next remembered sitting on a table nursing
his
burns, helpless as his family fought the rising water of the two creeks
lapping at the door. "I watched its advance and cried," he recalled, as
he did at the sight of a small herd of deer driven into the nearby
woods
by hunters. There was the sound of shots, and his tears came at the
realization
that the beautiful, terrified creatures must die.

Even to one so young, death already had meaning,
it was so
commonplace.
The Longs had fled from New York before its shadow, but few families
escaped
it completely. Even remote Sullivan County offered no safe refuge, and
the Cooks were no exceptions.

They had been fortunate. The cemetery was dotted
with tiny
graves, but
they had lost only one child. And with the addition of August Heinrich
in 1868, they now counted five healthy children. But the family's life
was irrevocably redirected when Dr. Cook, after a brief illness, died
of
pneumonia on May 10, 1870, at age 47; Freddy was not quite five:

Of this tragedy I only remember Father's
under-chin
whiskers
and his mud colored suit left hanging on the wall after he was buried.
I do not remember the funeral, but I do remember tears and a cold cry
which
made me shiver at sometime about the coffin.

Magdalena Cook used the money from her husband's small life insurance
policy
to build a one-story-and-garret frame house on the high banks above the
creek, out of harm's way. Little was left to live on, but with tenacity
and frugality the Cooks scratched a living from what they could grow or
earn at odd jobs, while Mrs. Cook tried to collect unpaid doctor bills
to buy food and clothing. The hard times brought with them hard lessons
for young Frederick:

For a few years we struggled for a bare
subsistence.
Sour milk
and potatoes with apples and an occasional rabbit or woodchuck linger
in
my memory of food delicacies.... Life here muse represent the beginning
of my schooling for the hardship to follow in wild adventures to the
brim
of the unknown.

The children walked the three quarters of a mile to school on Callicoon
Creek. As in many rural places where children provided the farm labor,
the session lasted only four months. In his later years Frederick Cook
would look back on that one-room schoolhouse next to the graveyard and
call it "the most attractive place on Earth." It was through its door
that
he first entered the world of ideas, a world he embraced and held fast
for the rest of his life. Geographical locations especially interested
him, and he gathered together every book on the subject that he could
obtain.

Not all was happy at school for Freddy Cook,
though. Outside
of class
he seemed always to be in trouble. Rivalries between the town boys and
the country boys often led to fistfights. He and his brothers sometimes
came home battered and bruised and got an additional whipping to
discourage
such behavior.

Despite these frequent scrapes, Freddy was known
for his
"natural reticence."
Perhaps he had inherited his mother's reserve along with her large
facial
features and remarkably fine, clear blue eyes, set below asymmetric
eyelids
that gave his face an open yet contemplative look. Or maybe the slight
lisp with which he spoke made him think better of speaking too much and
exposing himself to ridicule.

He had but one particular friend, Peter Weiss--PY,
as he was
known.
PY stuttered. Perhaps their shared speech impediments made it that much
easier to talk to each other and to form a common bond. Freddy and PY
liked
to have adventures and visit forbidden places, like the local swimming
hole, where Freddy's career almost ended when he plunged into its
depths
and nearly drowned. "I shall never forget that struggle," he recalled
long
after, "and though I nearly gave out, in that short time I learned to
swim.
It seems to me now I have been swimming and struggling ever since."

But life is never all hardship for a growing boy.
The
surrounding country
was wild enough for any imaginative youngster to find adventure in.
Everlasting
springs fell from its hillsides, and it was full of secret nooks and
caves
to explore. Freddy would often venture into the woods, alone or with
his
brothers, as far as time and nerve allowed, then find his way home,
using
the position of the sun as a guide.

Without a father, the Cook brothers learned to be
independent
at an
early age. Will Cook remembered that Freddy, especially, depended upon
no other if he felt his own efforts would succeed alone. When he
decided
to build a "bunker," he went out and chopped down the young trees
himself,
and out of them he fashioned a sled of such quality that it had no
equal
in the entire neighborhood.

In a countryside so broad and high, with so much
to stimulate
a boy's
imagination, Freddy Cook found himself drawn to the natural world
around
him and wondered at the things he didn't understand. He learned by
observation,
and this led to some curious childhood experiments:

I had noted that if I looked at my dog
long enough I
would
get his attention, and the dog seemingly got the same idea, for he made
some experiments of his own. At these times he would look intently for
prolonged periods. If in due time my eyes did not respond, a little
whimper
would come from a seeming distance. When the eye connection was made he
would come to my side and proceed to talk. His language was wordless,
but
I understood....

I next tried the lesson my dog taught me on
Mother....

... I tried to get her attention from various
parts of the
room by prolonged
gazing without success. Finally I made a boyish discovery that pleased
me very much. There was just one place from which I could always get
her
attention. That was when I came between her and the stove.... It was
probably
the heat waves that carried my gaze impulse....

What is the language of the unsaid message of
the gaze?

In 1878 Mrs. Cook, seeking better opportunities, rented out the farm
for
$25 a year, and the family took the train 48 miles east to Port Jervis.
The two eldest boys were old enough for outside work, and even Fred,
now
12, held part-time jobs while attending Mountain House School.

His first was in a glass factory in Port Jervis.
Later Fred
took work
as a lamplighter, cleaning, filling and lighting the naphtha lights
that
lined the streets of the town. He also helped his two older brothers
with
the spring log-rafting on the Delaware, which provided thrills they all
looked forward to with great anticipation.

But even with what the boys brought home and the
money she
earned by
taking in sewing, Lena Cook was hardly better off than she had been in
Hortonville. She sent Theodore to New York City to try to find steady
employment.
He secured a job in a beer keg factory, and a year later she followed
with
the other four children. They found shelter at the foot of South First
Street in the shadow of the Havemeyer Sugar Refinery, along the East
River
in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. There, August died of scarlet
fever, but life for Fred and the other children continued on its
pleasureless
course:

Now I was the baby, about 15 years old.
We all
worked; sister
and I went to school but worked on Saturdays and Sundays. Slowly a way
was made out of poverty to scant but secure subsistence.

I never liked New York. It was slushy and dirty
when snow
came, stuffy,
hot and sweaty in summer. There were no nearby woods in which to enjoy
what a bare footed boy wants, but it did serve well to co-ordinate that
Indian inclination deep seated in all country boys of my age and time.

Fred was now a restless youth seeking an ambition but lacking in
guidance:

This was, I suppose, that nebulous desire
which
sometimes manifests
itself in early youth and later is asserted in strivings toward some
splendid,
sometimes spectacular aim.... I was discontented, and from the earliest
days of consciousness I felt the burden of two things which accompanied
me through later life--an innate and abnormal desire for exploration,
then
the manifestation of my yearning, and the constant struggle to make
ends
meet, that sting of poverty, which, while it tantalizes one with its
horrid
grind, sometimes drives men by reason of the strength developed in
overcoming
its concomitant obstacles to some extraordinary accomplishment.

Through the good offices of a distant relative, William Ihrig, Will
Cook
found work selling vegetables in Manhattan's Fulton Market. Mr. Ihrig,
impressed by Will's industry, agreed to hire his brother as well. Fred
worked in the market on weekends from 2 A.M. until noon. Coming from a
household with the plainest kind of fare, he marveled at all the things
there were to eat in the world. There he saw for the first time many
exotic
edibles, including mock-oranges, as grapefruit were then called.

During the week Fred attended P.S. 37, two blocks
from his
house, where
the principal took an interest in him and encouraged his studies. He
graduated
from grammer school at 16, but as Theodore, and then Will, married and
assumed new responsibilities, Fred had to help support his mother. He
secured
a job as an office boy and rent collector for a real estate agency in
Greenpoint,
then enrolled in night school.

Fred accumulated enough money to buy a second hand
press with
which
he printed advertising bills for his employer and local merchants, as
well
as greeting and calling cards. These generated such a demand that he
decided
to devote his full time to printing. Proud of his work, he designed his
own business card. Bordered by a Chinese scene of a boy fishing by a
lake,
it read: "F.A. Cook, Job Printer, 255 South First Street, Brooklyn."

But Fred Cook always had bigger ambitions. His
mother
suggested that
one of the boys should follow in their father's footsteps and become a
doctor. The idea fired Fred's imagination; he decided the advantage
would
fall to him.

By now he had finished his high school studies
and, flushed
with a new
goal, set out to accomplish it. Fred sold his printing business and
used
the profits to purchase a milk route in the hope that he could earn
enough
to pay for a medical education. Milkmen delivered between 2 and 8 A.M.
He reasoned this would give him a source of income and leave his days
free
to finish his college course.

He started out with a small hand-delivered route
requiring
little capital
and a manageable amount of time, buying his milk from Rauch and
Hartman,
a local milk wholesaler. This milk, a new, richer product from Delaware
County, quickly outstripped demand for the standard milk then coming
from
Orange County. As a result, Fred's business flourished, and his
brothers
heard opportunity knocking. They gave Fred a loan for expansion, and
with
it he bought his first wagon and a big brown mare for $150. Theodore,
who
had become an expert woodworker at the barrel factory, helped modify
the
wagon to carry glass bottles, which were just beginning to replace the
tin cans then in use. Fred moved in with Will on Bedford Avenue and
established
a milk depot there, renting stable space from their next-door neighbor,
Mr. West, a manufacturer of ketchup and pickles.

In 1887 he entered the College of Physicians and
Surgeons at
Columbia
University. As the son of a physician, he received a reduction in his
matriculation
fee.

In that simpler time, an entrant needed only to be
of good
moral character
and 21 years of age. Two winter lecture series were prerequisites to a
course in practical anatomy and the passing of satisfactory written
examinations
in surgery, chemistry, practice of medicine, materia medica, anatomy,
physiology
and obstetrics. Practical examinations on a cadaver and for urinalysis
competency were also required before a medical degree could be
conferred.

Between school and his growing business
enterprise, Fred Cook
found
little time for leisure. He went to work at 1 A.M. and worked through
the
night, reporting to school by 9, where he remained until 4. Between
5:30
and 1 in the morning, he slept. He worked every day, but on weekends,
when
there was no school, he tried to catch up on his sleep. Whatever few
spare
waking moments the young man had, he spent in studying.

It took an hour and a half to travel from Brooklyn
to New York
on the
23rd Street Ferry. When the college moved from 23rd Street to 59th
Street,
Fred Cook could not afford the extra hour of commuting time entailed.
He
transferred to New York University, located more conveniently at 26th
Street.

His milk business continued to grow, so Fred
returned the
favor Will
had done him years before by making him his partner. They soon owned
six
horses and were delivering as far as Rockaway Beach, and their milk
wagons
now also carried specialties, such as sweet cream and fresh print
butter.

As Will took on his share of the responsibilities,
Fred had
more time
for other shines. One was more sleep. The grueling schedule he had been
keeping had taken its toll; now there was a better attitude for
schoolwork,
more time for study and a chance for a social life.

When a stupendous blizzard struck New York on
March 11-12,
1888, the
effects of the unexpected storm were devastating. All transportation,
even
the elevated railways, ground to a halt, and what electrical and
telephone
service existed was cut off. At least a hundred people perished, some
in
attempts to reach their places of employment on foot. Hundreds of
horses
froze to death along with tens of thousands of the sparrows that
plagued
the city.

Fred's medical classes were suspended, and the
milk business,
like all
others, closed down. But the storm only posed another opportunity for
the
Cook brothers to show their ingenuity. Coal was selling at fabulous
prices--as
much as a dollar a pail at the height of the storm. So Theodore put
runners
on an 18-foot boat he had built, and hitching their horses to it, Will
and Fred made coal deliveries over streets made impassable to ordinary
vehicles by the three-foot drifts.

Patches of snow from the "Dakota Blizzard" still
remained in
shady places
as late as June. By then, Fred Cook had met Libby Forbes at a
temperance
festival at the 2nd Street Methodist Church. Miss Forbes, one of four
Forbes
sisters from Greenpoint, worked for the French, Shriner and Urner shoe
factory as a stenographer, an unusual job for a woman. Soon Fred was
seeing
Libby regularly. After a courtship of less than a year, Fred proposed.
Her family, at first opposed, since Fred was still in school, relented,
and the couple married in the spring of 1889.

Fred's final examinations were due in June 1890,
just before
his wife
was expecting their first child, and with Libby no longer employed,
money
was short. Somehow, though, he managed to keep up with his business
obligations
during those first months of married life and even found time for
private
instruction in medical diagnosis.

As summer came round, since Fred was not yet a
doctor, Libby's
family
selected a homeopath for the delivery. There were complications. The
baby
girl lived but a few hours, and in a week Libby Cook was gone, too, a
victim
of peritonitis. Fred was shattered. The future had suddenly become a
vacuum.
Months of loneliness and depression set in.

Word soon arrived that he had passed his
examinations and was
now a
physician. Dr. Frederick A. Cook decided to lose himself in his new
work.

He sold his share in Cook Brothers Milk and Cream
Company to
Will and
from the proceeds bought the furnishings and equipment for an office
away
from Brooklyn and its sad memories.

Though 25 and a widower, Dr. Cook still looked
boyish. He
decided to
do something about it:

Young doctors of this period considered
it important
to cultivate
a full crop of whiskers to better express the dignity of their
calling....
I ... allowed my hairy head to fill out to artistic ... fashion. Thus
beset
in facial pride, armed with a diploma from one of the best medical
schools
of the land, endowed with the usual self-confidence of university
graduates,
and vested with the sublimity of my profession, I opened an office in
New
York [at 338 W.] 55th St.

He thought all he had to do was hang out his shingle and the patients
would
come. But even the addition of his whiskers failed to bring them to his
door. He learned quickly that it took hard work and patience for a new
doctor to build up a practice. Suddenly time, which had always been so
scarce, became a burden. Dr. Cook sought escape in reading:

To this time I was an average young man
of
twenty-five who
had risen out of poverty with an unusual hunger for knowledge. I had
read
very few books of fiction and among books of travel only Dr. Kane's
Arctic
[Explorations] and Stanley's [In] Darkest Africa.

With time to think and plan there developed a
longing to get
out over
the world into the unknown to blaze the trail for a life of useful
adventure.

Kane's Arctic Explorations! What other book set so many young men to
dreaming
of adventures untold? Perhaps the fact that Elisha Kent Kane was a
physician
himself caused the young doctor sitting in his empty office to look
between
the covers of that book Dr. Kane had left like a spell upon the nation.

A review of it published in the London Saturday
Review might
almost
be taken as a prefigurement of Dr. Cook's own future, and of a book
that
he would write about his past:

Looked at merely from a literary point of
view, the
book is
a very remarkable one.... The general impression which the book conveys
is graphic to the last degree, and its effect is greatly heightened by
what Dr. Kane speaks of as defects. It consists almost entirely of
extracts
from a journal kept at the time, connected by narrative matter more or
less compressed from it. An attentive reader can trace the feelings and
prospects of the little knot of icebound prisoners, and of their
gallant
leader with extraordinary clearness, for Dr. Kane is obviously a
cultivated
man, and by no means unaccustomed to watch the process of his own mind.
The hoping against hope, the determination to look at the bright side
of
things, and the effort to write himself into a cheerful frame of mind,
which may be detected in the lines penned by the light of the dim
perpetual
lamp, in the filthy little den into which the crew was crowded--penned,
too, when all but the writer had half forgotten their trouble in
sleep--seems
to us far better worth having than any amount of artistic composition.

What thoughts stirred in Frederick Cook's mind as he read the
incredible
adventures of this man, who managed to pack into 37 years of life more
than an average lifetime of experiences? Dr. Cook had wished to escape.
Perhaps in the pages of Arctic Explorations he first glimpsed the route
of that escape, and in Dr. Kane's vivid descriptions of the wild people
and places of Greenland he heard for the first time the mysterious call
of the North.

One morning in the very early spring, as he was
reading the
New York
Telegram, he chanced upon a small notice datelined Philadelphia:

Robert E. Peary, Engineer at the Naval
Dockyard, is
now engaged
in fitting our his expedition to North Greenland. As is well known, it
is his intention to try to ascertain the extension of Greenland
northwards,
by undertaking an excursion on sledges over its snowcovered interior.
His
companions on the expedition are not yet decided upon.

Dr. Cook had hoped to absorb himself in work and forger his recent
tragic
losses. But the work did not come, and there was no relief from his
thoughts.
Now, before his very eyes, had appeared an avenue for complete escape.
He immediately wrote to Peary, volunteering to serve as his surgeon
without
pay, then waited impatiently several weeks before a telegram arrived
asking
him to come to Philadelphia.

That trip must have been an adventure in itself.
Up to then he
had never
left his native state except for brief excursions into Pike County,
Pennsylvania,
across the Delaware River from his boyhood home.

As he walked up the steps at 4118 Elm Avenue,
opposite
Fairmount Park,
he didn't know what to expect. Could he hope to be selected with so
little
experience? His knock at the door was answered by a charming young
woman
who showed him into the drawing room, where her husband was sitting in
full uniform.

Robert E. Peary, Civil Engineer, U.S. Navy, was an
impressive-looking
figure as he rose to shake the young doctor's hand. He was 34 years old
and six feet tall, his ruddy complexion set off by his sandy, reddish
hair
and an even redder mustache, large and twisted to pointed ends, which
nearly
obscured his narrow mouth. When he smiled, a fine set of white teeth
showed
in his squared jaw, marred only by a space between the two front ones.
He looked every inch the picture of a proud naval officer. But it was
his
eyes, most of all, that one noticed. Stern and steely gray-blue,
despite
the smiling face, they had a veiled appearance that was hard to
penetrate,
yet they seemed to look right through a man.

Peary invited the doctor to sit down. The tall
figure of his
wife leaned
lovingly on her husband's shoulders as he outlined his plans to his
attentive
guest:

With a company of five or six members I
shall be
landed at
Whale Sound, on the west coast of Greenland, in 77 [degrees] 35'
latitude,
in the month of June or July. We shall spend the remainder of the
summer
and autumn in erecting a hut for our wintering, lay in an abundant
store
of meat, make scientific investigations and excursions to the inland
ice,
and, if the season is favorable, also establish a provision-depot near
the south corner of the Humboldt Glacier. In the course of the winter
we
shall prepare sledges, "ski," clothes and travelling outfit, and
practice
running on "ski," and Canadian snow-shoes, for which purpose the head
of
Whale Sound is well adapted.

When spring begins, four or five of the company
will start
over the
inland ice for the Humboldt Glacier, one or two remaining behind to
take
care of the house. If good progress is made, we shall continue from the
Humboldt Glacier to the head of Petermanfjord. From here two or three
of
us will push on, whilst the others return to Whale Sound with the
necessary
provisions for the home route. Those in advance will continue to
Sherard
Osborne fjord, go farther on to the head of De Long fjord, and finally
push on towards the northernmost point of Greenland. When this is
reached,
and its geographical position determined, the party will return by the
same route to Whale Sound, and the expedition will take the first
chance
to return to America.

After Lieutenant Peary finished the outline of his expedition, there
were
many questions for the doctor to ask and to answer. They discussed the
techniques of fieldwork. Peary had been in Nicaragua and had made a
reconnaissance
of Greenland, but he readily admitted that he had yet to master the
science
of arctic research.

Dr. Cook's first impression was that of "a
thoroughly decent
fellow,
and a strong character." Peary questioned him closely as to his
qualifications,
but the doctor confessed he had few beyond good health, his medical
degree
and a strong desire to walk where no others had gone before.

"The life up there under the Pole is terribly
hard," Peary
said. "Where
the expedition is going we will be as much out of touch with the world
as we would on another planet. Death will be hovering near us always.
Some
of us more than likely will never return to civilization. I advise you
not to go if there is any fear in your heart."

But Frederick Cook had already had his taste of
death. "I am
willing
to take the chances," he replied. "This is my great opportunity, and I
won't be held back by dread of hardships." But as he said the words he
shivered a little, inwardly, at the picture Peary painted.

By the end of the afternoon, it was agreed. Dr.
Cook would be
the surgeon
of the North Greenland Expedition. The Pearys asked him to stay for
dinner,
but he excused himself, saying he had another engagement in New York.
As
he walked down the steps of the Pearys' Elm Avenue apartment building
after
saying goodbye, he saw more than the green expanse of Fairmount Park
stretching
away before his eyes:

A new school of life now in prospect came
over a
spreading
horizon. The first pages of the art of poleward travel were soon to be
set into my book of endeavor. This was quite as exciting as the actual
execution of the dream of future adventure.